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I happened to see my brother Dean’s cherry shaker outside as I was driving by the shop today, so of course I swung in there to take a picture. I know he’ll read this and go, “Why is she taking a picture of my cherry shaker?” Because that’s what I do, bro.
This particular shaker is what they call a one-man shaker, because one person drives it and also operates the tarps. The operation isn’t technically just one person, though, because someone needs to drive a forklift and shuttle tanks back and forth to the cooling pad. If you’re far, far away from the cooling pad (where the cherries are cooled in preparation to transport them to wherever they’re headed), then you also need someone to drive the flatbed truck full of tanks back and forth to the cooling pad.
Why, back when I was a kid, we didn’t have one-man shakers. We had shakers that required a whole team of people to work them — drive the catching frame, pull the tarps, drive forklifts to shuttle tanks back and forth (that was my mom and me), sort cherries in tanks on the back of the catching frame, and drive the flatbed. Good times.
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